‘Well, even if you spent some time here and there, finally, fate took you near ships,’ Ramabhadran said.
‘It must have been fate. My job wasn’t in a cloth mill at Parel, after all.’ A smile appeared on Aravindan’s face. ‘It sounds easy. You get to know how difficult it is only when you get close to it. You have to deal with so many different people from different places. Whether you send it by sea or air, it’s just a stick thrown to the winds. Those days, one didn’t have these machines and stuff and it was just good luck if the packages reached where they were supposed to and reached intact. That was how things were those days. Nothing was certain.’
‘A lost feeling, right Aravindan?’ Ramabhadran’s face showed respect.
‘Once in a while I’d feel as though all the blood in me had rushed to my brain. Couldn’t sleep. The moment I shut my eyes, I’d see those huge cranes that lift cargo. And on the bundles of the cargo, there I would be, hanging from the chains.’
‘Siva! Siva! Don’t tell me you had to hang on chains too.’
‘No, no. I was talking of my dream.’ Aravindan laughed. ‘I started getting treatment for it. First there were pills and injections from the allopathy doctor. When they checked they found not only blood pressure, but sugar and cholesterol, and whatever one can find. And the blood that had rushed to my head didn’t seem ready to come down soon. I started worrying that the blood vessels would burst.’
‘Must have been the stress of your job,’ Perumal intervened.
‘What else? This was all I thought of. I couldn’t even read a book properly those days. After a long while with the allopathy treatments, it was ayurveda’s turn. And then it was homeopathy’s turn. Finally, when I was wondering whether to go to a unani physician near Bhendi Bazaar, a German guy came to the company, as though in response to a call from me. Though he had come earlier on work, I realised he was peculiar only then.
‘He looked at my face and asked me straight out, “What is the matter with you?” I didn’t know what to say. Just think of it Perumal, a stranger looking at your face and asking what is troubling you. When we started talking, I realised he was from Emden. His favourite place was India. He constantly looked for reasons to visit India. Once the actual work was over, he would go to all kinds of places no one had even heard of. Some caves, some broken down temples, the sculptures there, the murals, and so on. These were the things that fascinated him. He knew quite a bit of Sanskrit but felt he had to learn more. He had learnt French and Spanish but said he surrendered before Sanskrit. A real ocean of knowledge…’
‘Tell us what he said about your illness.’
‘That’s the best part. The first thing he said was not to let those doctors touch me—“If nothing worked, they would find a reason to lay a knife on you. Or they’d pump you full of steroids. And with that the patient never recovers fully.” And so, first of all, he told me to stop all medicines. Then he asked me to practise yoga early in the morning. A little exercise, some meditation. No drinking, no meat. Only vegetables and leaves. A sort of control. I tried this for a while.’
‘And it took a white man to tell you this? And how did this treatment work?’ Perumal, who had been listening with great interest, asked.
‘I did feel better. A little relaxed and happy. I felt hungry and had an appetite. Could sleep quite well too. Not just that. The surprising bit was, once the blood pressure came under control it was as though I could see more clearly. If I sat for a while with my eyes closed, I could see some things. Not just the ship and the channel but even the piled bundles of cargo.’
‘Wow! As though you got some divine power, is it?’ Ramabhadran asked.
‘More or less like that.’
‘Guruvayurappa!’
‘But after a while—this job of mine is like that—I couldn’t keep to the routine. Once again I had to go back to the medicines and chants.’
‘Whatever that is, you left this place and found your own place, didn’t you? That is a great thing.’
Perumal’s face held the glimmer of a smile.
‘What is it, Perumal?’ Aravindan asked.
‘You said, just now, that you could see the ship in the sea, the channel, and even the cargo piled in it, if you sat for a while with your eyes closed. You and your work were becoming one at that moment. A sort of sublimation. It is not easy to reach that needle’s point of concentration.’
‘Who knows!’
‘No, I was just thinking,’ Perumal continued. ‘If you could not keep your blood pressure under control while working, when there are so many facilities and aids, just think of the Greeks and Romans, who with only the stars as their guide, opened out new channels and spied out new lands. Think of the sailor who prepared the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the first century, and noted down this route correctly. He managed to describe the routes from the Red Sea to our shores, in full, with the clarity required to prepare a map.’
‘It is a wonder.’
‘So, you have to wipe away the face in your imagination—the face of that Hollywood captain with his scarred and burnt face and one bound eye and a criminal look. Most of these sailors were excellent seekers as well, with a sense of history. We cannot even imagine the challenges they faced when they traced this sea route, two thousand years ago. Not just that, they have laid it down in detail; a spice route in this direction like the silk route of the Chinese.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it.’ Aravindan nodded.
‘There’s a lot to say.’ Perumal smiled.
Perumal was not surprised. There had always been a sailor in Aravindan’s conversations, even when they had been students. The sea was a wonder for those who had grown up seeing a river. Sailing ships were wonderful things to those who had traversed rivers in small country boats. It is from these dreams of seas that the certainty came—that there was another shore at the other end— and with this realisation the desire to cross the waters was born.
‘The siren sounding at the port brought only one thought to my mind—the helplessness of the ships that depart, their solitude, their despair,’ Aravindan said. ‘It was not the boundlessness or the wealth of water that covered huge stretches of land that touched me but the hint of the unknown. To be frank, the sky has never scared me quite so much. I always believed that birds were safer than the creatures of the water.’
‘Aravindan, the Malayali’s touch with people on continents across the seas is really ancient,’ Perumal continued. ‘The rivers and the sea yield so quickly to the land of comings and goings. Malayalis have this inborn ability to build bridges in their mind.’
‘That is true,’ Aravindan nodded. ‘Even a century back, we had reached Malaya and Burma and Singapore and Persia.’
‘Forget the twentieth century, Aravindan,’ Perumal laughed aloud. ‘We are now talking of a time before Christ. A time you can reach out through memories alone.’
They were sitting on a raised platform near the Malavana ferry—Perumal, Aravindan and Ramabhadran.
Perhaps, because it was a holiday there was no one at the landing stage. The raft carrying the motor vehicles had nearly reached the other shore. The water was darkened by the shadows of the coconut trees that leaned to the east. There was a thin breeze. They could see two small boats piled high with grass. The Malavana Rock stood to one side like a memorial of a forgotten time.
‘There used to be a ferry here, earlier. Very few people used it,’ Aravindan remembered. ‘Now there are lots of people and vehicles. Once across, it has become easy to reach Kuzhur and Mala and Kanakkan Kadavu.’
‘This peace tempts me,’ Perumal said. ‘It is now a long time since the river and the breeze and the green have vanished even from my dreams. I feel stifled when I have to go to my village, which is red and dry. I just want to get back. Towns, at least, have the greenery of the gardens.’
He continued, ‘All of us are guardians of a land that someone entrusted to us, in a manner of speaking. Don’t you think so, Aravindan? When we are una
ble to take care of the land, which is only one third of the surface of the earth, we need a tsunami to remind us of our duties, isn’t it?’
‘That is true,’ Aravindan nodded. ‘This is also a surrender.’
Perumal was remembering. Perumal was speaking. He murmured, ‘Muziris’.
‘Stories you have heard, right?’ Ramabhadran asked.
‘Stories I heard, stories I have made other people hear, things found, things searched for—when all these come together, you reach a state of history. In between, you have seekings, conversations, interpretations…’
They became children, eager to listen to stories again. Aravindan with his ear eager to pick up the story, and Ramabhadran chewing betel leaves. Perumal continued. In a mixture of Malayalam, Tamil and English.
‘Actually, how did this Muziris enter my mind? It was definitely not from history books. Outside Kerala, there have been many studies on the foreign connections of ancient times. Particularly, the Indian Ocean exchanges. The name Muchiripatinam, on the western shore of India, would come up when discussions took place about the antiquaries found in places like Arikamedu in Tamil Nadu. But this place, which historians and archaeologists had been seeking for centuries, had not really registered in my mind. But then I happened to read some of the literature from the Sangam period—Akananuru, Purananuru, Pathitrupathu. The life detailed in those became an awakening for me—a period, a few centuries ago, when foreign merchants and their middlemen came and went, met at a particular place on the shore, opened up in my mind. Though they were from different parts of the world, they were called Yavanas in these writings.
‘In a way, the far-seeing poets were one step ahead of the historians—they could see the comings and goings of different types of people from different places, the give and take, the culture-mix that would result from the mingling of people. We can definitely accept that a mingling beyond the demands of plain commerce would have taken place then. But when the shores and the seas moved out of the way, the distance between the continents melted.
‘Muchiripatinam had been one of the important ports on the western shore of Kerala, even two thousand years ago. It was also the main entrepôt for trade with the Western countries. In the Kishkinta Kanda of the Ramayana, Sugriva talks of Muchiri to the monkeys, who are about to go in search of Sita. There are mentions of the place in the Sabha Parva of the Mahabharata and in Varahamihira’s Brihatsamhita.’ Perumal was getting into his stride.
‘One has heard stories of people who go in search of gold. Or about those who dive for pearls. They wandered all over the land and dug deeper and deeper into the earth. Or dived into the depths of the sea where the pearls grew. But this story was different. It was the story of people who sought a small ugly black pearl and crossed continents and oceans, creating new channels in the sea. It was a mission for them. It was the culmination of centuries of hard labour. This magic pearl did not grow within the earth or in the depths of the sea but on wild creepers that twined round huge trees, in the inner reaches of forests.’
When Aravindan looked questioningly, Perumal laughed in his usual style. ‘Yes, our poor pepper. So hot that many people could not bear it. But there was a time when the people of the West needed this black pearl, badly. They needed it to add spice to the dishes on the tables of the wealthy and the well-born. The pepper, which came from distant lands, became a status symbol. It is said that some of the lords would show off by exhibiting their hoard of pepper to guests. One barbarian king who nearly invaded Rome is supposed to have turned back at the gate when he was offered three thousand pounds of pepper.
‘To parade their wealth and influence, the Roman emperors looked to the expensive things they got from the East. Emperor Nero’s palace is supposed to have been decorated with expensive pearls, corals, gold, silver, sandalwood, ivory carvings and thin silks. The queens and the other denizens of the palace were not behind in their conspicuous consumption either. The historian Pliny mourns the large quantities of perfumes that were wasted in the funeral rites of Queen Poppaea Sabina, who had married both Nero and Otho.
‘Pepper was also essential in the life of ordinary people. They had to store food for the three or four months of winter. The land would be covered with snow and ice and life would be frozen for those months. It is said that most of the cattle would be slaughtered in northern Europe, at this time, as they couldn’t be fed. They needed salt and pepper to preserve the meat that was stored in the dark airless rooms in the centre of the house. The only medicine for the fevers that prevailed was also pepper. And so, pepper, which was also a life-saving medicine, took on an aura of divinity. Stories spread about it. The higher order of priests is supposed to have worn garlands made of pepper. It was said in those times that there was no disease that could not be cured by making the patient smell these garlands.’
Perumal paused for a moment and looked around suspiciously, ‘Is anyone likely to come this way?’
‘I don’t think so. It is a holiday after all. There might be someone on the ferry when it crosses over. Why?’
‘Just like that,’ Perumal winked as he took out a small brown bottle from his pocket. He opened the screw top of the bottle and poured a little directly into his mouth. Wrinkling his face at the bitter taste, he wiped his mouth.
‘Not quite the done thing, is it?’ His smile had an embarrassed look. ‘I thought a little pick-me-up wouldn’t be bad as one spoke of history. Do you want some?’
‘Not like this,’ Aravindan shook his head.
‘Ramabhadran?’
‘I do drink, but I don’t feel like drinking, sitting here.’
‘Sorry, did I make a mess of it?’
‘Nothing of that sort. One needs something to add to the enjoyment when one speaks of history.’
‘To tell the truth, I drank for the first time at this place. Aravindan, do you remember when we were in college you got some once toddy from the tappers, right here?’
‘But toddy is only a drink, not alcohol.’
‘No, drinking isn’t the problem. It is the talk after that. I join people at drinks only if I can get along well with them.’
‘Anyway, it would be difficult to find a prettier place to wet a parched throat and so it is a good beginning.’
‘And to tell stories.’
Perumal looked around as though he was enjoying it. The darkness would melt into the water only a little later. The ferry, which was past the halfway mark, did not have many people on it. There was a car, a couple of bikes, and five or six people. The passengers, standing to one side holding on to the railing, were speaking loudly.
‘The river wants to say something too…’ Perumal murmured and dived back into the memories.
‘The merchants of the Middle East really took advantage of this craze for pepper in the Western countries. Egyptians and Phoenicians had reached our western shores, hugging the shores and avoiding the dangerous middle seas. They knew about this magical fruit that grew on creepers that twined round the huge trees. The pepper that was taken from here in small vessels, reached Aden first and from there by land to the countries that lay around the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Herodotus has written about this, five centuries before Christ. By the time it changed hands and reached Greece and Rome and other European countries, the price of the pepper, extracted expertly from the vines, would increase two hundred times. But people were still willing to buy it. The traveller, Pliny the Elder, has noted that the cut-throat price of this merchandise was emptying the treasuries of the Roman Empire. According to his rough estimates, merchandise worth four million pounds was flowing out of India. One Roman emperor even imposed a tax of twenty-five per cent on this to break the monopoly of the Arabs.
‘The canny Arab merchants kept the origin of this magic seed a secret from the Greeks. They also spread a whole lot of weird stories about it. They claimed that these berries were from the high branches of the huge trees, guarded by poisonous snakes in the deep reaches of the Caucasian mountain for
ests; only those who were specially gifted could penetrate into these deep forests. They said that when the berries started ripening, the undergrowth was set on fire to drive away the serpents. The berries were supposed to get their special smell and colour and taste from that forest fire.
‘Though they continued to listen to the stories told by the Arabs and to buy pepper at an exorbitant price, the Greeks had instructed their sailors, who sailed all the seas of the world, to find out the truth. Later, when Egypt came under their suzerainty, Rome started thinking seriously about direct trade, to get rid of the middlemen. And so, after a lot of effort and many expensive voyages, they found out the source of the pepper. But they still did not know how to get there.’
‘I’ve heard that the Greeks were expert sailors. They had large ships and navigation aids, even in those days,’ Aravindan said.
‘That’s right, Aravindan! They had advanced sailing vessels,’ Perumal nodded. ‘But the problem was that they did not know the way here.
‘Those days, Alexandria, on the banks of the Mediterranean, was the major emporium for sea merchandise from the East. It was also the main entrepôt to the European countries. It was not easy in those days, before the Suez Canal was built, to go around Africa and reach our shores, the way the Arabs came. Therefore, efforts were made to reach here from some port on the Red Sea.
‘At the end, nature herself opened new pathways to end the sorrows of the sailors who did not know which direction to head for. The channel found by the Greek sailor, Hippalus, after long wanderings and searches, became the magic carpet of the Arabian tales. He found that if sails were unfurled to the south-west winds of the monsoon, the Arabian Sea could be crossed and our shores reached. It took only forty days to reach Muziris from the port called Bernike on the Red Sea. As the sails were filled with the monsoon winds, not many oarsmen were required and they never lost their way. And when the rainy season ended, when the winds turned, they could return with the north-east wind. When this discovery changed the face of international trade, the wind was named the Hippalus wind.’
The Saga of Muziris Page 5